(New Beginnings, No.6)
AIDS is a disease caused by the HIV virus. It breaks down the body’s immune system, leaving it vulnerable to infection, and is spread above all by either heterosexual or homosexual sex.
The AIDS pandemic
Worldwide, 16.3 million have died of AIDS. Of those, 2.6 million died in 1999.
Sub-Saharan Africa has nearly two-thirds of all the HIV/AIDS cases in the world. There are 3,800 new cases there every day. In Africa, 13.7 million people have died of AIDS. Of those, 2.21 million died in 1999, that is, about 85% of the total for that year. It means that 6,000 women and men die of AIDS each day in Africa. Of those, 55% are female, 45% male. At present ten million people there are infected with HIV, and the very great majority of those will die within a few years. In South Africa, less than half the population is expected to reach the age of sixty. In Botswana, life expectancy has dropped by 14 years since 1990.
In India, there are 4 million people who are HIV positive.
In Latin America, AIDS level are rising steadily.
In North America, 80% of AIDS sufferers are males, mostly homosexuals.
In Russia, HIV levels doubled between 1998 and 1999.
In Ireland, the number of reported new cases doubled between 1999 and 2000, from 200 to 400. They are found mainly among active homosexuals and drug addicts.
A particular example: Zambia
The greater city of Lusaka, the Zambian capital, and Dublin city and county have roughly the same population. In Dublin, there are about 25 funerals a day, in Lusaka 250. AIDS accounts for most of the difference.
In Lusaka, it means that, even though they work round the clock, mortuaries have corpses stacked on top of each other because of lack of space. It means queuing at a cemetery waiting your turn to bury your relative. It means that one of the few growing businesses is coffin making.
Life expectancy has fallen to 42 years.
One in four pregnant women is infected. It is more than likely that their babies will be infected also – through the very act of being born.
Nearly one person in every five between the ages of 15 and 49 has either the virus or the disease.
Zambia has 360,000 orphans – and only one quarter of them attend school.
Irish Aid, the government relief and development agency, is feeding 11,000 orphans in Zambia.
Orphans
In Africa, 10.4 million children under the age of 15 have lost either their mothers or both parents due to AIDS. By the year 2010, that number may reach 30 million.
Orphans are more likely to be malnourished and to lack education and health care.
If they survive to their teen years, many are likely to become prostitutes.
If the extended family cannot cope, orphans are the most likely to lose out.
AIDS is wiping out the middle generation and leaving a society of children and grandparents.
Obstacles to facing the issue
Nobody wants to admit having HIV or AIDS, or to having a relative with it. It is explained as TB or witchcraft. A continent is in denial. A popular saying in Zambia has it that everyone believes in AIDS during the day – and no one believes in it at night.
AIDS can be overcome
Uganda faced the issue openly and undertook measures to tackle it:
– public education, starting in primary schools, because pupils there were already sexually active;
– distribution of condoms;
– voluntary testing for HIV, the virus that causes AIDS;
– counselling and support services for those who were HIV positive.
The result? HIV infection dropped from 15% to 9.7% of the population.
In Zambia, church groups are involved in home-based care, where groups from a parish visit people with AIDS, give food and medicine, and wash them and their clothing. They encourage local people to do the same.
A second part of their effort is what are called behaviour change seminars. People in the 16 to 30 age group lead their peers in changing behaviour, motivating them to avoid casual sex and to be faithful to one partner.
A Challenge to be taken up
In a culture where sex is freely sought and freely given, the most basic challenge is to change personal behaviour. To speak of the need for a change of behaviour is sometimes regarded as unrealistic. But is there any other way of getting to the root cause of the problem?
In Africa, teenage girls suffer more than 5 times the rate of infection of teenage boys because older men exploit them. Empowering women has to be part of a strategy for the control of AIDS.
Poverty, too, is both a cause and an effect of the disease as it is also with TB and leprosy. AIDS is a social and economic problem as well as a medical one. That calls for action on the question of debt which is so crippling to Africa. When Uganda received debt relief in 1999, it used much of the $45 million saved to finance the removal of school fees, and within less than a year, attendance almost doubled. Such measures give people hope.
Good News
The task of overcoming AIDS is not an impossible one. It is basically a matter of political and personal will.